Persistent

How many times have you seen this on mainstream TV news: An intrepid "reporter" approaches a Republican luminary (e.g., a sitting governor, a congressman or a senator) and asks, "How do you respond to the accusations about Donald Trump groping women?" The luminary, depending on whether he or she is #nevertrump will try his/her best to defend the Donald, suggesting that the allegations are alleged and not proven, or will lambast him. The reporter will press, asking how any decent man/woman could support Trump? Then press again—each question intended to demonstrate to the public just how bad Donald Trump really is. Not one question addressing any substantive policy or issue. The GOP luminary will respond accordingly, but the responses aren't nearly as important as the questions. The questions indict, and that's their intent. You've seen this play out dozens (check that—hundreds) of times over the past few months.

How many times have you seen this on mainstream TV news: An intrepid "reporter" approaches a Democrat luminary (e.g., the sitting president, or a governor, a congressman or a senator) and asks, "How do you respond to hard facts disclosed in hacked emails that Hillary Clinton tried to subvert an FBI investigation, provided favors to foreign investors in a pay-for-play scheme, threatened national security with her private email server? Do you think its okay to tell the voters one thing but have a 'private position' that they don't know about? That's what she said she does, after all. Do you think that should cause voters some concern?"

Wait! You rarely, if ever, have seen the second encounter. In fact, I'll bet you've never seen it, but if you have, you'll note that there's never a follow-up question—never. The Dem luminary is allowed to defend his candidate, not matter how dishonest the defense is.

The media is shaping the election to favor their candidate—Hillary Clinton. They accomplish this through the tone of their "reporting," through the frequency with which they address specific issues, through the questions they ask and the innuendo those questions carry, through simple omission of important stories that hurt their candidate and unwarranted emphasis on stories that hurt her opponent. Editors allow opinion to creep into "news" stories, cherry pick subjects that will be friendly to Clinton and damaging to Trump. They cut off interviews that begin to damage Clinton. They ask follow-up questions and then follow-up the follow-up when Trump is under fire, but almost never ask a follow up when Clinton or one of her surrogates tells an obvious lie.

Because the voting public has become exhausted by the media and Clinton campaign's never-ending allegations that Trump is a serial sexual abuser, unhinged and/or otherwise unfit for the presidency (can you say, racist or bigot or misogynist or xenophobe?), they have created a new meme (voiced by Barack Obama in a news conference today): any suggestion that the election is "rigged" is unprecedented and un-American, irresponsible and otherwise just plain evil. It's also whining. Looks like for the next week or so, "rigged" and "whining" will be the Democrat watchwords.

Donald Trump's claims that the election is "rigged," In his ham-handed style, Trump doesn't enunciate his complaint well, but when Trump calls the election "rigged," what he actually means (whether he realizes it or not) is that he is up against a competent, well organized and highly effective propaganda machine. The Clinton campaign aided and abetted by a complicit media have become masters of limiting the discussion to those topics that they want the voters to hear, of repeating the same meme over and over and over again until their claims become the public's reality. The Clinton campaign has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on TV commercials hammering at the same memes while the media supports those memes with its one-sided reporting. Everything else simply vanishes.

One of history's truly evil men once said: “But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.”

Say what you will—Hillary Clinton and her trained hamsters in the media are nothing if not persistent.